Kirby Smart addresses challenges of new college football calendar

College football coaching is not a profession for the average joe. It’s not a 9-5 and go home type of job. It requires availability around the clock, especially during the season. But even during the months when there aren’t games every week, coaches keep themselves up all hours of the night worrying about recruiting or managing the 100+ player teams they have. It’s never-ending. Even this year’s national title winner, Kirby Smart, feels the full weight of the job from time to time.

At SEC Media Days this year, Smart spoke on that topic. Of course, he would know just how exhausting a full season of coaching is, considering his 2020-21 Georgia team experienced the longest season of anyone in the nation along with Alabama. And they’re already right back in the thick of preseason preparation.

Ever since COVID restrictions finally lifted for football programs and what, in particular, they were able to do on the recruiting front, the calendar has been hard on head coaches.

“Well I’m hesitant to say. June of last year, if you ask any college coach and he’s honest with you, was probably the toughest time ever. We were coming off a 14-month silence period, so it was gone and everybody wanted to go out and do things. This June was a little better because there wasn’t as much of that activity. You have February, a dead period, you have July, a dead period. There’s no coach that should be complaining about that environment.”

So, at least everybody gets a couple of months off during the year to reset. And though the life of a coach can be grueling — ultimately, these guys understand the sacrifices involved long before they enter the profession.

“The coaches will get by. The coaches will be fine. Coaches make a decision when you get into this. You know, when you get into this, you have the choice. You’ve probably thought about coaching. You know what, I’m going to go over there and talk about it. I’m not going to be the one on the field doing it. But I love what I do, and I think all coaches love that. But it is very stressful in terms of the time commitment. It’s not about the winning and losing, it’s about the time commitment you take away from your family to go recruit. But you make that choice when you sign up for the job.”

Also, the challenges of coaching aren’t Kirby Smart’s only worry about football. Some of the newer changes to the sport and college athletics as a whole have him concerned about the future.

“What I worry about is our game. The game and all the things involved in the game, whether it’s portal or NIL, all the other things out there, the conferences. I worry about that more than I do just the coaches.”